Alicia Menendez

thumb|414x414px|Menendez, in 2017 Alicia Jacobsen Menendez (born July 2, 1983) is an American television host and writer, who is known for being the author of the book The Likeability Trap; along with being an anchor for the MSNBC television program, The Weeknight. She was also known for being the host of American Voices with Alicia Menendez from 2020 until 2024; along with being a correspondent on the PBS show Amanpour & Company. Quotes Women and girls across cultures are socialized to care what other people think about them. What I can tell you for sure is that women who don’t care were just out there living their best lives, marching to the beat of their own drummers. Where it becomes a challenge is that thinking about other people often becomes overthinking about other people and modulating our true selves. Confusingly, there are a lot of women, like myself, who've been given both sets of feedback, who've been told that they are too much or not enough, which just tells you how subjective and context-specific that feedback can be. I think what makes that extra complicated is that we're living in a moment where we're told that great leaders are authentic leaders. taken from an interview by NPR, 19 November 2019 “I am constantly inspired by immigrants—many of whom have taken tremendous risks in pursuit of a better life.” “Ten years ago I wish I would have understood that you can’t force your moment.” “Fifteen years ago I wish I’d focused less on selling myself and more on deciding whether or not I wanted to invest in others.” taken from an interview by Moves Power Women Society holds people who are affiliated with this university to a high but often unattainable standard. Harvard is not perfect, people who go to Harvard are not perfect, but there is worth in the imperfection. Those interpersonal relationships are more important than any public measure of success. I know the enormous joy of feeling that your life has been dedicated to helping others, and also the enormous frustration of public life. taken from an article published by the Harvard Crimson, 9 June 2005 When your close loved one is at the center of a political scandal, it’s in your obit too. You can’t have a private life as an elected official. It’s not a family-friendly institution. taken from an interview by the New York Times, 20 March 2024 It’s easiest to imagine my non-Hispanic white mother’s role in my Latina identity as the “absence of.” If I’d had another mother, even a Latina mother, who wanted to uproot us from Union City, all of that cultural nuance would have been lost. But the truth is that without my gringa mother, I might not be as proud to be Latina as I am today. taken from an article published by the Pew Research Centre, 1 June 2012 My thought was that I would speak to women who don't give a damn and that they would be off living their best lives. What I found was even those women feel that they pay a price in the workplace for being so brazenly themselves, that often by identifying and addressing problems, they become the problem. Where this manifests in a workplace environment is around critical, subjective feedback. Most of the feedback that women receive about the way we sit, the way we talk, the way we communicate. Some of that can be useful, but it tends to be the disproportionate amount of feedback that we get. What we need to do is use our collective energy to push back on this. It's one thing to give someone counsel, it is another thing to open doors to introduce them to people, to connect them with opportunities. That is what it is going to take to help us catapult forward. taken from an article by NBC News, 12 November 2019 It sets us up to feel as though if we don’t succeed, it is our own fault. Instead of focusing on what women can do for themselves, I’m focusing on what we can all do to push back against these larger questions of what makes someone less likeable. Be ambitious, be wildly ambitious, because if you constantly run up against people who are telling you ‘no,’ ambition is the only thing that motors you through. taken from an article by MS NOW (formerly MSNBC), 29 January 2021 External links Category:Living people Category:1983 births Category:Non-fiction authors from the United States Category:People from New Jersey Category:21st-century American women